1. The University Library at Newcastle developed online Skills Guides to provide consistent and accessible information literacy instruction. These guides cover key topics like finding, evaluating, and managing information. 2. Interactive online tools were also created, including a Search Strategy Planner to help students plan literature searches and a Dissertation Planner to guide research projects. 3. An online course for a faculty research program used a variety of media like videos and quizzes. Assessment showed improved student satisfaction and engagement with the blended learning approach.

1. Working Smarter digitally: teaching
information literacy skills through online
and blended learning
ARLG Conference
Tuesday 4th June, 2019
Terry Charlton and Lorna Smith
@nclroblib
University Library
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2. The Projects

3. Skills Guides
• Information literacy provision at Newcastle was pretty good!
• …but often inconsistent and difficult to find
• Hidden deep in the library’s content management system
• Learning technologist employed to fix these problems (and help staff make
better use of technology in their teaching)
• Started by refocussing content and creating a range of Skills Guides
• Guides were focussed on three key themes:
Finding Information • Evaluating Information • Managing Information
• Nothing fancy!

5. Skills Guides
Finding Information • Evaluating Information • Managing Information
• Brings everything together into a one-stop-shop
• Consistent formatting and brand-styling (remaining editable by staff)
• Far more visible on our subject support pages
• Promoted via the library’s marketing and communications teams
• Articles always text first, supplemented by videos and interactive tools
• Avoided embedding third-party tools and quizzes wherever possible
• Created our own!

6. Online
ResourcesHigh quality videos
andinteractive
quizzes

7. First go
• Link to the website
Skills Guide
Finding Information

8. Evaluation
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350
Excellent
Good
Okay
Not so good
1.1
1.2
1.3
2.1

9. Feedback Well
Spoken
Informative
Clear and
concise
Easy to
understand
Short and
simple
Interesting
Excellent
content
Fast Useful
Helpful
Step-by-
step
Well
thought out
Relevant
Professionally
done
Good
quality
Straight to
the point
Detailed yet
simple
Educational
Not too long
winded

10. Search Strategy Planner
• Help students plan and search for information
• Undergraduate and postgraduate researchers
• Previous provision was a dated web page and Word form
• Created another new Skills Guide
• Text articles with supporting videos
• New tool developed to simplify literature search planning
• Takes a stepped approach to keep process simple and manageable
• Search plans can grow to be quite detailed!

11. Online
Tools
Interactive Search Planner

12. Dissertations and Research Projects
• Tool encourages students to self-help (which gets better results)
• Feature to request feedback on plan from supervisor/liaison team
• Provides more detailed pre-session information for one-to-ones
• Highlights problem areas to focus teaching (sessions not understood)
• Better enables blended learning and flipped classroom teaching
• Already embedded in modules / blackboard
• Extensible - repurposed for a proposal planner and variety of ‘buzz-feed style’
quizzes and formative tests

13. First go
• Link to the website
Skills Guide
Dissertations & Research Projects

14. @nclroblib
University Library
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HSS8002 project: The drivers
• The HaSS Faculty Research Programme.
• Stressed librarians!

15. Planning content by week

16. Planning and creating content
• Used FutureLearn
activity cards (variant of UCL’s
ABC Learning design cards.)

17. @nclroblib
University Library
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Planning each topic

18. Online materials used a range of media including
written content, instructional videos, talking heads,
audio clips, quizzes and interactive skills tools.

19. @nclroblib
University Library
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Skills Checker
https://bit.ly/2F5ULup

20. @nclroblib
University Library
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Skills Checker results

22. @nclroblib
University Library
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23. @nclroblib
University Library
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Impact
• Assessment – visible improvement.
• Module feedback – overall satisfaction jumped from 3.8 to 4.1.
• Better student engagement.
• 89.3% appreciated working at their own pace.
• 64.3% appreciated the ability to revisit difficult concepts.
• Happier Liaison Librarians!
• Learnt a lot.

24. The future

25. Useful links
• Skills Guides: https://bit.ly/2NFbyKI
• Dissertation Planner: https://libguides.ncl.ac.uk/dissertations
• HSS8002 module: https://bit.ly/2JYPQOL
• Skills Checker: https://bit.ly/2F5ULup
All work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

26. Any questions?

27. Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative CommonsAttribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.